So, I got a Palm Pre about a week ago, and I've fallen in love with smartphones as a category. Yeah, I'm late to the party, but I will never go back to regular phones. This one in particular has some great things going for it, and some... Er, opportunities for improvement, I guess.

Weak PointsBattery: This thing eats battery life insanely fast. That's compared to my old dumb phone, and yes, I am using it for hours on a typical day to grab data, check mail, Twitter, etc. Fortunately, there's the Touchstone induction charger, but even so, I was surprised how often I need to charge it; every day, sometimes twice. Fortunately, you can swap out the battery yourself, unlike an iPhone, if you really need to juice up on the go.

Photos: The 3 MB camera is slooooow. I can't seem to get the hang of the shutter; it's cripplingly slow to take a picture. I really, really wanted this to work a lot better. Major disappointment.

< 50 Apps: The apps store has all the basics, but it sure is less than Apple. OTOH, they're rolling out more every day.

Strong PointsPalm Ease of Use: Everything just seems to work, from the beautiful box and components, to the 30 second tutorial and the fluent gestures. The integration of gmail, calendar, contacts, Outlook, and multiple email accounts all are almost magically mapped together. Best of all, this feature is free, unlike the MobileMe feature on the iPhone.

Apparently the staff that designed the Pre includes a number of former Apple designers... So perhaps it should be no surprise that it's a mobile OS design triumph. It's smooooooth.

On the hardware side, having a real keyboard works wonderfully. And it takes a standard headphone jack.

Multiple Apps: Running 5 or 6 apps at once is beautiful. I can click a link, go see the site, and then flick back to the active card/app that I left behind. Or I can launch a complex browser page, then go check my Twitter account and come back in a minute.

Value for MoneyOne major element that struck me most about the Palm Pre and that has gotten no play in reviews I've seen is that it offers all of what the iPhone does, for less money. "But Monkey King," I hear you Apple fans say, "the iPhone is the same price or less, how can you say that?"

Well, it's easy. Because smartphones are subsidized by the carriers, the upfront cost of the iPhone device is not the real price you pay; the real price is in the service contract. AT&T's monthly service adds up to about $2360 over the lifetime of the contract (that includes texting and two years of the MobileMe price to make this an apples-to-apples comparison, but I didn't add in a GPS nav contract).

The Sprint contract, by comparison, will run me just $1,512 over two years. A little haggling at sign-up got me a massive 27% discount off the listed monthly price.

From my experience, AT&T reps will not haggle at signup. Ever. And even the pre-haggle rate from Sprint is just $69/month. That's for all-you-can-eat, no limit usage on data, texting, photo messages, etc. Compare the Apple/AT&T price of $90+/month.

SummationThe Pre is as impressive a device as the iPhone, for about $850 less. Oh, HELL yes.

Comments

Curious about the haggling you mentioned. Any tips to offer there? I've been thinking that it's time for a smart phone. As an Apple purist I've been enjoying researching the iPhone but suspecting that the Pre is more practical for me financially, plus the benefit of already being familiar with Palm OSes and so on. So what did you haggle for and how did you do it?

The haggling was not exactly knock-down, drag-out, carpet-seller-in-the-bazaar level haggling.

I spent some time at a Sprint store getting the lowdown from one of the sales reps, and got answers to a few questions. Then I just said, "Looks great, but I'm going to need to talk to my wife before I decide."

Presto, instant offer of a big discount (15% or so?). The more hesitant I got, the bigger the discount. I also asked about cheaper phones/less minutes/etc to make it clear that cost was a factor in my decision.

They were really looking for a switch from my old carrier, and I just dragged my feet the whole way.